The jury in the trial of a man who stabbed a student to death in the street have been told they would not be letting his grieving family down if they were to clear the killer of murder.

Kieran Crump Raiswell, 18, died after being knifed in broad daylight by Imran Hussain.

Hussain, 27, of Bracknell, Berkshire, has admitted a charge of manslaughter, on the basis his responsibility for the killing is diminished by paranoid schizophrenia.

However the prosecution in a Manchester Crown Court trial say he is faking the symptoms and is guilty of murder, a charge Hussain denies.

Gap year student Kieran, from Chorlton , was on his way to Manchester city centre to look for a job when Hussain attacked him on the afternoon of January 16 at Upper Chorlton Road, Old Trafford.

In his closing speech, Alistair Webster QC, defending, said: “There are deeply unsettling aspects to this case, deeply upsetting aspects, when you are told the effects upon the family of Kieran Crump Raiswell, no doubt thoroughly decent people whose lives have been blighted by this terrible tragedy.

“Their son, let it be understood, was wholly blameless. The true cause here comes in a serious mental illness. It doesn’t excuse what Imran Hussain did, it can’t justify what he did, but it does mean that he remains guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.

"It’s perhaps one of the marks of a civilised society that where people act, even with such terrible consequences, in a way which they wouldn’t have acted if they weren’t ill, we don’t ignore the fact of that illness and go on to punish them if they were of full capacity, but we understand its role in the offence.

“After all, Imran Hussain didn’t ask to become mentally ill – he didn’t contribute by some drug addicted or anti-social lifestyle. He’s had no choice about it. He’s simply seriously mentally ill and sadly may never recover.”

Mr Webster went on to say that if the jury were to accept Hussain’s manslaughter plea they would not prevent ‘innocent’ Kieran’s loved ones getting justice, adding: “You’re not letting society down or Kieran’s family, far from it. You’d be applying the law to the evidence.”

The court has heard that top psychiatrists believe Hussain is ‘highly likely’ to be a paranoid schizophrenic, and he is being treated for the condition at Broadmoor Hospital.

Mr Webster said ‘all the experts were lined up’ in agreement with the defence case. The prosecution say that Hussain planned the killing and took steps to get away with it, but describing the crime as ‘chaotic’, the defence reminded the jury of how the killer failed to disguise himself and was repeatedly captured on CCTV.

The prosecution say that Hussain has duped experts by faking symptoms after his lies of innocence to police unravelled. In his closing speech Mr Webster said there was ‘independent’ evidence of how Hussain changed from being sociable to isolated in the months before the killing, consistent with the ‘predromal’ phase of schizophrenia.

The jury began considering their verdict on Wednesday afternoon and have now been sent home for the evening.They will return to court to continue their deliberations on Thursday morning.